_Tom_ had been her pride; the brother she honored and feared, while Jimmie, nearer her age, was more a companion of her childhood; the one who teased and petted her by turns, one day putting angle worms in her bosom just to hear her scream, and the next spending all his pocket-money to buy her the huge wax doll she saw in the shop window, down on Washington street, and coveted so badly. Such were some of Rose’s reminiscences of Jimmie, and while time had softened down the horrid sensations she experienced when she felt the cold worms crawling on her neck, it had not destroyed the _doll_, the handsomest she had ever owned, nor made her cease to love the teasing boy. She could not feel just as her mother did about him, for she had not her mother’s strong, patriotic feeling, but her tears flowed none the less, while she, too, half wished him lying beneath the summer grass, in beautiful Mt. Auburn. “How did you hear from him?” she asked, when her first burst of grief was over, and her mother replied by taking out a letter, on which Rose recognized her brother’s handwriting. “He sent me this,” Mrs. Carleton said, and tearing open the letter, she read it aloud to Rose. “RICHMOND, VA., _June, 1861_. “DEAR MOTHER: Pray don’t think you’ve seen a ghost when you recognize my writing. You thought me dead, I suppose, but there’s no such good news as that. I’m bullet-proof, I reckon, or I should have died in New Orleans last summer when the yellow fever and I had such a squabble. I was dreadfully sick then, and half wished I had not run away, for I knew you would feel badly when you heard how I died with nobody to care for me, and was tumbled into the ground, head sticking out as likely as any way. I used to talk about you, old Martha said, and about Rose, too. Dear little Rose. I actually laid down my pen just now, and laughed aloud as I thought how she looked when I treated her to those worms; telling her I had a necklace for her! Didn’t she dance and didn’t Tom thrash me, too, till I saw stars! Well, he never struck me a blow amiss, though I used to think he did. I was a sorry scamp, mother,—the biggest rascal in Boston. But I’ve reformed. I have, upon my word, and you ought to see how the people here smile upon and flatter me, telling me what a nice chap I am, and all that sort of thing.